Tag devices employing near field communication (NFC) technology, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, have become increasingly commonplace in an increasing variety of uses. While originally introduced as an addition to price tags attached to retail store items to combat shoplifting, tag devices now include key fobs for building doors and automobiles, as well as “smart” credit and debit cards.
The growing use of such tag devices has encouraged a proliferation in different implementations of NFC employing different frequencies, encodings, protocols and/or bitrates. This makes difficult any attempt to harmonize implementations to enable interoperability among tag devices and the reading devices they interact with.
More specifically, difficulties arise when multiple tag devices employing different implementations of NFC are simultaneously brought into the vicinity of a reading device. As the reading device generates an electromagnetic field to wirelessly provide electric power to the multiple tag devices, the different protocols and/or timings that each use in their differing implementations of NFC can result in interfering behavior among the multiple tag devices such that communications with the reading device are prevented.